Capturing structured data about previous events from users of a social networking system

ABSTRACT

The invention provides a display interface in a social networking system that enables the presentation of information related to a user in a timeline or map view. The system accesses information about a user of a social networking system, including both data about the user and social network activities related to the user. The system then selects one or more of these pieces of data and/or activities from a certain time period and gathers them into timeline units based on their relatedness and their relevance to users. These timeline units are ranked by relevance to the user, and are used to generate a timeline or map view for the user containing visual representations of the timeline units organized by location or time. The timeline or map view is then provided to other users of the social networking system that wish to view information about the user.

BACKGROUND

This invention relates generally to social networking and, inparticular, to displaying information about users of a social networkingsystem.

Social networking systems capture large volumes of information fromvarious sources. Information stored by the social networking system willoften, if not always, have a time associated with it. Typically,information about a user of a social networking system is displayedthrough a profile web page that is divided into sections, each sectioncontaining different types of information pertaining to the user. Forexample, a user's profile page may have separate sections foreducational information, interests, status updates, and hobbies, as wellas a section containing thumbnails of photos of the user, and links tothe user's friends.

The shortcoming of this sort of display is that as the social networkingsystem accumulates more and more information about the user over time,it becomes difficult to locate older information about the user, sincethe user's profile page has a limited amount of display space, and thesystem is constantly obtaining new information as the user adds newphotos, friends, status updates, etc. Although viewers of a user'sprofile page are often interested in the newest information about auser, this will not always be the case. For example, old classmates of auser may wish to browse information about the user from a shared timetogether at university that occurred many years earlier.

Furthermore, since there is a large variety of information beingcaptured in large volumes by the social networking system, there is aneed for ways to aggregate information in compact yet informativestructures, so that users can efficiently consume such information. Inaddition, information from a certain time period often has arelationship to other types of information from the same time period,which makes it desirable to associate or display such informationtogether. For example, it may be interesting for viewers to see photosof a user from his college days in conjunction with that user's statusupdates from the same period. However, if the user's profile pagedisplays information segmented by information type, then viewers wishingto view the user's historical information are forced to manually searchfor that information in each information section individually. Thismakes it difficult, if not impossible, to view different types ofinformation related to a particular time period concurrently. Inaddition, if a user has a large amount of information in a particulartime period, it would be desirable for there to be some way to selectthe most relevant information for presentation to viewers. It would alsobe beneficial to enable users to provide data associated with a timeperiod to the social networking system in a structured manner, so thatthe system can present this information to viewers in an organized andconsistent way.

SUMMARY

Embodiments of the invention provide a display interface in a socialnetworking system that enables the presentation of information relatedto a user in a chronological timeline. A ranking method may be used tohighlight the most relevant information in the timeline.

In an embodiment of the invention, the system accesses information abouta user of a social networking system, including both data about theuser, such as date of birth, graduation date, interests, employers,photos, videos, etc., as well as social network activities related tothe user, such as comments, status updates, blog posts, etc. The systemthen selects one or more of these pieces of data and/or activities froma certain time period and gathers them into timeline units based ontheir relatedness and their relevance to users. For example, data and/oractivities from a time period may be gathered into a timeline unit basedon being of a similar type (e.g., several photos from a time periodcould be gathered into one photo timeline unit). In another example,data and/or activities from a time period may be gathered together intoone timeline unit based on being related to a common event. For example,the photos and status updates from a user's 40^(th) birthday party mightbe gathered into one timeline unit.

Once the system has created timeline units it can rank these timelineunits based on their relevance to users, and can then construct atimeline interface for the user comprising a visual timeline populatedby visual representations of the top-ranked timeline units. Thistimeline interface can then be provided to other users of the socialnetworking system that wish to view information about the first user.

The system also allows users to add structured information to a user'stimeline through an interface that is configured to collectevent-specific information. The system enables users to select from awide range of pre-configured event types such as birthdays, graduations,etc., and for each event type the system displays a specially configuredinterface that captures information relevant to that specific event.Users are also given an option to create custom events to add custominformation to a user's timeline.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is a diagram of a system environment for presenting timelineinterfaces to users of a social networking system, in accordance with anembodiment of the invention.

FIGS. 2A, 2B, 2C, 2D, 2E, 2F, 2G, and 2H illustrate embodiments of thetimeline interface in various states.

FIG. 3 is a diagram of the system architecture of a social networkingsystem for generating timeline units that may be visually presented tousers, in accordance with an embodiment of the invention.

FIG. 4 is a data flow diagram illustrating the interactions betweenvarious modules in the social networking system for generating andranking timeline units, in accordance with an embodiment of theinvention.

FIG. 5A illustrates a process for generating and ranking timeline units,in accordance with an embodiment of the invention.

FIG. 5B illustrates a process for generating timeline units andcollecting user curation data, in accordance with an embodiment of theinvention.

FIG. 6 illustrates one embodiment of the story generation, selection,and display process for newsfeeds and historical newsfeeds.

FIG. 1 and the other figures use like reference numerals to identifylike elements. A letter after a reference numeral, such as “130A,”indicates that the text refers specifically to the element having thatparticular reference numeral. A reference numeral in the text without afollowing letter, such as “130,” refers to any or all of the elements inthe figures bearing that reference numeral (e.g. “130” in the textrefers to reference numerals “130A” and/or “130B” in the figures).

The figures depict various embodiments of the present invention forpurposes of illustration only. One skilled in the art will readilyrecognize from the following discussion that alternative embodiments ofthe structures and methods illustrated herein may be employed withoutdeparting from the principles of the invention described herein.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

A social networking system generates timeline units based upon data inthe social networking system that is associated with users, andgenerates displayable representations of selected timeline units, whichare dispatched to client devices for display to viewing users in atimeline interface. The selection of timeline units for display in thetimeline interface may be based upon a ranking of candidate timelineunits, where a machine-learned model may perform the ranking.

System Overview

FIG. 1 is a diagram of a system environment for presenting timelineunits on a timeline, pertaining to a user of a social networking system,to other users of a social networking system, in accordance with anembodiment of the invention. The users 135 interact with the socialnetworking system 100 using client devices 105. Some embodiments of thesystems 100 and 105 have different and/or other modules than the onesdescribed herein, and the functions can be distributed among the modulesin a different manner than described here.

The social networking system 100 offers its users the ability tocommunicate and interact with other users of the social networkingsystem 100. Users 135 join the social networking system 100 and then addconnections to other users of the social networking system 100 to whomthey wish to be connected. When a user joins the social networkingsystem 100 they may create a user account. The user account enables theuser to maintain a persistent and secure identity on the socialnetworking system 100. The user account may include a user profile thatstores details about the user, such as name, age, sex, etc. When thesocial networking system 100 performs an action with the user, thisaction may be conducted with the user account, and not literally withthe user (the human being) who controls the user account. For example,when the social networking system 100 “creates a connection” between twousers, what actually happens is that the social networking system 100creates a connection between the user accounts of the two users. Useraccounts may be created not only for individuals but also for otherentities such as corporations, non-profits, fictional characters, etc. A“user” of the social networking system 100 can be any such entity.

In one embodiment the client device 105 used by a user 135 forinteracting with the social networking system 100 can be a personalcomputer (PC), a desktop computer, a laptop computer, a notebook, or atablet PC. These computers may execute an operating system, for example,a Microsoft Windows-compatible operating system (OS), Apple OS X, and/ora Linux distribution. In another embodiment, the client device 105 canbe any device having computer functionality, such as a personal digitalassistant (PDA), mobile telephone, smartphone, etc.

The interactions between the client devices 105 and the socialnetworking system 100 are typically performed via a network 310, forexample, via the internet. The network 310 enables communicationsbetween the client device 105 and the social networking system 100. Inone embodiment, the network 310 uses standard communicationstechnologies and/or protocols. Thus, the network 310 can include linksusing technologies such as Ethernet, 802.11, worldwide interoperabilityfor microwave access (WiMAX), 3G, digital subscriber line (DSL),asynchronous transfer mode (ATM), InfiniBand, PCI Express AdvancedSwitching, etc. Similarly, the networking protocols used on the network310 can include multiprotocol label switching (MPLS), the transmissioncontrol protocol/Internet protocol (TCP/IP), the User Datagram Protocol(UDP), the hypertext transport protocol (HTTP), the simple mail transferprotocol (SMTP), the file transfer protocol (FTP), etc. The dataexchanged over the network 310 can be represented using technologiesand/or formats including the hypertext markup language (HTML), theextensible markup language (XML), etc. In addition, all or some of linkscan be encrypted using conventional encryption technologies such assecure sockets layer (SSL), transport layer security (TLS), virtualprivate networks (VPNs), Internet Protocol security (IPsec), etc. Inanother embodiment, the entities can use custom and/or dedicated datacommunications technologies instead of, or in addition to, the onesdescribed above. Depending upon the embodiment, the network 310 can alsoinclude links to other networks such as the Internet.

The client device 105 executes a user interface 130 to allow the user135 to interact with the social networking system 100. The userinterface 130 allows the user to perform various actions associated withthe social networking system 100 and view information provided by thesocial networking system 100. The actions performed using the userinterface 130 include adding connections, posting messages, postinglinks, uploading images or videos, updating the user's profile settings,and the like. The information provided by the social networking system100 that can be viewed using the user interface 130 includes, images orvideos posted by the user's connections, comments posted by the user'sconnections, messages sent to the user by other users, and wall posts.In an embodiment, the user interface 130 is presented to the user via abrowser application that allows a user to retrieve and presentinformation from the internet or from a private network. In anotherembodiment, the user interface 130 consists of a mobile app running on amobile device such as a smart phone or tablet. In yet anotherembodiment, the user interface 130 consists of an application running ona desktop or laptop computer.

The user interface 130 allows users to view the data of other users ofthe social networking system 100; the data of users of the socialnetworking system can be presented to other users by way of a “profilepage,” which is an arrangement of the users' social networking data. Inone embodiment the profile page consists of data and code in a webstandard format presented through a browser. For example, the profilepage may consist of combination of any of XML, HTML, CSS, Javascript,plaintext and Java sent from a server to a web browser running on aclient. In another embodiment the profile page consists of dataformatted for presentation through a mobile app or desktop application.When a user ‘A’ views the profile or data of another user ‘B’ the firstuser ‘A’ is called the ‘viewing user’, and the second user ‘B’ is calledthe ‘subject user’. The user interface 130 also allows a viewing user toexplore information about a subject user via a timeline interfacegenerated by the timeline manager 119, described in more detail herein.The timeline interface may present a viewing user with the informationof a single subject user, or it may present the viewing user with thedata of several subject users simultaneously.

The social networking system 100 maintains different types of dataobjects, for example, user data objects 175, connection objects 195, andobjects representing timeline units 180 and actions 181. A user dataobject 175 stores information related to a user of the social networkingsystem 100. For example, a user data object 175 may store a user's dateof birth, or may store a photo of the user, or may store a reference toa photo of the user. A connection object 195 stores informationdescribing the relationship between two users of the social networkingsystem or in general any two entities represented in the socialnetworking system 100. An action object 181 stores information relatedto actions performed by users of the social networking system 100.Almost any activity of a user of a social networking system can bestored as an action. For example, an action can be the posting of a newcomment or status update, or it can be something as simple as forming aconnection to another user.

The social networking system 100 may maintain a social graph that tracksthe relationship between the various objects, users, and events capturedby the social networking system 100. In the social graph the users, theuser data, and other entities, exist as nodes that have edges that areconnections to other nodes. In this embodiment the edges representactions that create a relationship between the nodes. For example, anode representing a photograph stored in the social networking system100 may have an edge to a user that uploaded the photograph, and thisedge may be an “uploaded by” action. The same photograph may have edgesto several other nodes that represent the users in that photograph, andthese edges may be “tagged in” actions. Similarly, a node representing auser in the social networking system 100 may have edges to each noderepresenting posts made by that user. These edges may all be “posted by”actions. The edges in the social graph can have different types thatcorrespond to the different types of actions taken by users of thesocial networking system 100.

The social networking system 100 may maintain or compute a measure of auser's “affinity” for other users (or objects) in the social networkingsystem 100. The measure of affinity may be expressed as an affinityscore, which may represent that user's closeness to another user (orobject) of the social networking system 100. The affinity score of auser X for another user Y can be used to predict, for example, if user Xwould be interested in viewing or likely to view a photo of user Y. Theaffinity scores can be computed by the social networking system 100through automated methods, including through predictor functions,machine-learned algorithms, or any other suitable algorithm fordetermining user affinities. The social networking system 100 may storean archive of historical affinity scores for a user as their affinityscores for various users and objects changes over time. Systems andmethods for computing user affinities for other users of a socialnetworking system 100, as well as for other objects in the system, aredisclosed in U.S. application Ser. No. 12/978,265, filed on Dec. 23,2010, which is incorporated by reference in its entirety.

A timeline unit 180 consists of data and/or actions related to usersfrom a particular time period. The timeline unit 180 is used toaggregate user data/actions for presentation on a timeline. In oneembodiment a timeline unit contains data/actions related to a singleuser. In another embodiment a timeline unit contains the commondata/actions across two or more users. A timeline unit may contain justa single action or a single piece of data, or it may contain multipleactions and data that are related in some way. For example, photos andstatus updates from a single event may be grouped into one timelineunit. In one embodiment, a timeline unit may be “displayed” bygenerating a displayable representation of the data contained in thetimeline unit, and sending this displayable representation to a clientdevice 105 where the visual representation can be rendered as part ofthe user interface 130 that can be viewed by a user 135. The user dataobjects 175, connection objects 195, timeline units 180 and actions 181are described in more detail herein.

The social networking system 100 also comprises a user interface manager115, a timeline manager 119, a timeline unit ranker 125, and a timelineunit generator 120. The user interface manager 115 allows users of thesocial networking system 100 to interact with the social networkingsystem 100 via the user interface 130. The user interface manager 115manages the presentation of information to a user. The user interfacemanager 115 presents information to users via the user interface 130.Depending on the type of information being displayed to a user, the userinterface 130 may display a timeline generated with the help of thetimeline manager 119. In one embodiment the timeline is a visualizationof a user's social information (data and actions) displayed in anavigable chronological sequence. In another embodiment the timeline isa joint visualization of multiple users' common social informationdisplayed in a navigable chronological sequence (i.e. the timeline showssocial information from the intersection of all the users' information).In a different embodiment the timeline is a joint visualization ofmultiple users' social information containing information taken from allthe users' data (i.e. the timeline shows social information from theunion of all the users' information). The social information isdisplayed on the timeline in the form of timeline units 180 that aregenerated by the timeline unit generator 120.

The timeline unit generator 120 generates timeline units 180 from theactions 181 and the user data objects 175. The timeline unit ranker 125ranks the timeline units 180 based upon their relevance to and/orpreferences of users (the subject users, viewing users, or both). In oneembodiment, the timeline unit ranker 125 uses scores output bymachine-learned models to rank the timeline units 180. The timelinemanager 119 selects timeline units generated by the timeline unitgenerator 120 and sends them, or a displayable representation of them,to the client device 105. At the client 105 the timeline units areconverted to a displayable representation—if not already in such aform—and are displayed in a timeline interface. The timeline manager 119may use the ranking provided by the timeline unit ranker 125, usercuration, or a combination of both, when selecting timeline units fordisplay in the timeline interface.

System Details

FIG. 3 is a diagram of the system architecture of a social networkingsystem 100 for generating timeline interfaces for presentation toviewing users, in accordance with an embodiment of the invention. Thesocial networking system 100 includes a web server 320, a user interfacemanager 115, a timeline manager 119, an action logger 340, an action log351, a user data store 350, a connection store 330, a machine-learningmodule 345, a timeline unit store 365, a timeline unit generator 120,and a timeline unit ranker 125. In other embodiments, the socialnetworking system 100 may include additional, fewer, or differentmodules for various applications. Conventional components such asnetwork interfaces, security mechanisms, load balancers, failoverservers, management and network operations consoles, and the like arenot shown so as to not obscure the details of the system.

The social networking system 100 allows users to communicate orotherwise interact with each other and access content. The socialnetworking system 100 stores user data objects 175 in the user datastore 350. The information captured in the user data objects 175 relatesto the users of the social networking system 100, and includesbiographic, demographic, and other types of descriptive information,such as age, work experience, educational history, interests, gender,sexual preferences, hobbies or preferences, location, income, languagesspoken, ethnic background, and the like. The information in the userdata objects 175 may also include information captured by third-partyapplications that interface with the social networking system 100, suchas, for example, status updates from social applications, high scoresposted from game applications, and music played in media applications.Information about a user captured in the user data objects 175 may beexplicitly provided by a user or may be inferred from actions and otherdata of the user. For example, interests of a user can be inferred fromthe type of content accessed by the user. The user data store 350 maystore other types of information provided by the user, for example,images, videos, documents, likes indicated by the user, comments, statusupdates, recommendations of images, videos, or uniform resource locator(URL) links, and the likes. Images and video of users may be tagged withthe identification information of the users of the social networkingsystem 100 that are displayed in the images and video.

The connection store 330 stores data describing the connections betweendifferent users of the social networking system 100, for example, asrepresented in a connection object 195. The connections are defined byusers, allowing users to specify their relationships with other users.For example, the connections allow users to generate relationships withother users that parallel the users' real-life relationships, such asfriends, family, co-workers, partners, and so forth. In some embodiment,the connection specifies a connection type based on the type ofrelationship, for example, family, or friend, or colleague. Users mayselect from predefined types of connections, or define their ownconnection types as needed.

Connections may be added explicitly by a user, for example, the userselecting a particular other user to be a friend, or automaticallycreated by the social networking system 100 based on commoncharacteristics of the users (e.g., users who are alumni of the sameeducational institution). Connections in social networking system 100are usually in both directions, but need not be, so the terms“connection” and “friend” depend on the frame of reference. For example,if Bob and Joe are both connected to each other in the social networkingsystem 100, Bob and Joe, both users, are also each other's friends. Theconnection between users may be a direct connection; however, someembodiments of a social networking system 100 allow the connection to beindirect via one or more levels of connections. Connections may also beestablished between different types of entities for example, the socialnetworking system 100 can have an object representing a school and usersof the social networking system 100 that study in the school or who arealumni of the school can connect with the school in the socialnetworking system 100.

The social networking system 100 may include a mechanism that suggestsnew connections to users. The social networking system 100 may generatethese suggestions based on existing information stored in the system, orit may provide a mechanism for users to suggest connections to otherusers. For example, the social networking system 100 may suggest thatBob add a “family” connection to Jill, based on Bob's existing “family”connection to Steve, and Steve's existing “family” connection to Jill.In the same example, the social networking system 100 may also allowSteve to suggest Jill as a “family” connection to Bob.

The web server 320 links the social networking system 100 via thenetwork 310 to one or more client devices 105; the web server 320 servesweb pages, as well as other web-related content, such as Flash, XML, andso forth. The web server 320 provides the functionality of receiving androuting messages between the social networking system 100 and the clientdevices 105 as well as other external systems. These messages can beinstant messages, queued messages (e.g., email), text and SMS (shortmessage service) messages, or any other suitable messaging technique. Insome embodiments, a message sent by a user to another can be viewed byother users of the social networking system 100, for example, by theconnections of the user receiving the message. An example of a type ofmessage that can be viewed by other users of the social networkingsystem 100 besides the recipient of the message is a wall post.

The action logger 340 is capable of receiving communications from theweb server 320 about user actions on and/or off the social networkingsystem 100. The action logger 340 populates the action log 351 withinformation about user actions to track them. When a user performsactions using the social networking system 100, action logger 340 addsentries called actions 181, to the action log 351. Any action that aparticular user takes with respect to another user is associated witheach user's profile, through information in the actions 181 stored inthe action log 351. Such actions may include, for example, adding aconnection to the another user, sending a message to the another user,posting a photo containing another user, changing relationship statuswith another user, attending an event posted by another user, amongothers. In addition, a number of actions described in connection withother objects are directed at particular users, so these actions areassociated with those users as well. Some actions may be taken by userswhile not connected to the social networking system 100, and theseactions may be logged by a local application and transmitted to thesocial networking system 100 when a connection is finally made.

The user data stored in the user data store 350 and the actions storedin the action log 351 are collectively called the narrative data 380.This narrative data 380 is what forms the basis for building thetimeline units for subject users. Narrative data 380 may have a time anda location associated with it. The time and location associated with thenarrative data can be the time and location when/where the socialnetworking system 100 captured that particular user data or action, orit can be a different time and location associated with, for example,the creation of a particular piece of user data, or the occurrence of areal world event. An item of narrative data 380 may have multiple timesand locations associated with it. For example, a photograph of a usermay be associated with the time and location that photograph was takenas well as the time and location that photograph was uploaded into thesocial networking system 100. An item of narrative data 380 thatrepresents a user's change of relationship status from single to marriedmay also have multiple times and locations associated with it; one timemay be the date and location of that user's marriage and the other timeand location may be the time and location that the user's relationshipstatus was changed on the social networking system 100. In oneembodiment the narrative data 380 is represented by nodes in a socialgraph that contain data (such as image data, text data, video data) andconnections that connect the narrative data nodes to other nodes,including nodes that represent the actors or users associated with thedata.

The timeline unit generator 120 generates timeline units from usernarrative data that may be selected by the timeline manager 119 fordisplay in a timeline interface. In one embodiment the timeline unitgenerator 120 selects items from the narrative data 380 that areassociated with a single subject user and extracts informationdescribing these items from narrative data 380 to generate timelineunits 180 that may be used to construct a timeline for that subjectuser. In another embodiment the timeline unit generator 120 selectsitems from the narrative data 380 that are associated with multiplesubject users and generates timeline units that may be used to constructa common timeline for all these subject users.

In one embodiment the timeline units 180 are represented as nodes in asocial graph that have connections to other nodes representing narrativedata and users. In one implementation, timeline units 180 are a sub-typeof a more general aggregation called a story. Stories are a way for thesocial networking system 100 to aggregate data to display to users. Inthis embodiment timeline units are a specific incarnation of storiesthat are configured for display on a timeline interface. Stories can beused in contexts outside the timeline interface and are discussed inmore detail herein.

A timeline unit is associated with a distinct time period, and isgenerated from narrative data that is taken from that time period. Atimeline unit will usually not contain narrative data from more than onetime period. For example, a timeline unit could contain narrative datafor the month of January, 2010, but that timeline unit would not containnarrative data from another month. However, there can be timeline unitswith different granularities of time periods. For example, there may betimeline units for time ranges of days, weeks, months, and years.Timeline units for the year 2010 may contain some overlapping narrativedata with the timeline units generated for say January, 2010, sincethose time periods overlap.

In one embodiment, a timeline unit generated for a time period may begenerated from narrative data over the entire time range of that timeperiod, and thus may function as a “report” of the most interestingnarrative data over the entire time period. For example, a singletimeline unit generated for the month of January, 2010, may be generatedfrom every photo posted by the subject user in the month of January,2010, and thus may serve as the user's “photos” report for that month.

In another embodiment, a timeline unit may contain only a few pieces ofnarrative data clustering around a single time within the time period.For example, for the January, 2010, time period a timeline unit may begenerated for a user's birthday that falls on a particular day in thatmonth, and this timeline unit may contain photos, status updates, andpublic messages received by the user on her birthday. In anotherexample, a timeline unit may be generated from a single significantpiece of narrative data. For example, say the subject user becomesengaged on Jan. 25, 2010, a single timeline unit may be generated forthis event on that date.

The timeline units 180 may be sent to a client 105, either directly orafter conversion to a displayable form, where they are used to displayrepresentations of the selected items of narrative data, through atimeline interface displayed as part of the user interface 130. Thetimeline unit generator 120 may obtain the information describing theselected narrative data from the action log 351 and user data store 350,or it may obtain this information directly from other modules, such asthe action logger 340, the user interface manager 115, or other modulesthat implement functionality for performing different types of actionsand collecting different types of data.

The timeline units 180 generated by the timeline unit generator 120,when converted to visual form, may display only a subset of theinformation in the narrative data that they were generated to represent.For example, a timeline unit generated from a subject user's photoalbum, when converted to visual form, may display only a subset of thephotos in the album, and may display these photos in a reduced-sizethumbnail format. In another example, a blog entry by a subject user maybe reduced to a short summary of a few lines when presented in avisualized timeline unit.

A timeline unit may contain multiple pieces of narrative data within atime period, or it may contain only a single piece of narrative data.Each timeline unit has a time and location associated with it, which maybe used when chronologically ordering multiple timeline units in atimeline interface, or placing timeline units on a timeline mapinterface. If the timeline unit contains only a single piece ofnarrative data, the time and location associated with the timeline unitis the same as that of the narrative data. If the timeline unit containsmultiple pieces of narrative data, the time and location associated withthe timeline unit may be computed from the times and locationsassociated with those pieces of narrative data. For example, thetimeline unit may be associated with the mean of the times of thenarrative data, or it may be associated with the median of the times ofthe narrative data. Or, for example, the timeline unit may be associatedwith the time of the newest or oldest narrative data that it contains.The location of a timeline unit may be determined, for example, bytaking the geometric center point of the locations of the narrativedata.

The timeline unit generator 120 may determine that a subject user wouldprefer not to display certain narrative data in timeline units on theirtimeline. For example, an action describing a subject user hiding acomment posted by another user, or a subject user changing certain typesof user preferences, may not be interesting subject matter for displayon a timeline. The user interface 130 may give the subject user theability to explicitly indicate that certain types of narrative data arenot to be shown as part of timeline units. In addition, the timelineunit generator 120 may prevent the generation of timeline units based oncertain narrative data as a matter of policy, enforced by the socialnetworking system 100. For example, the subject user's viewing theprofile of another user or the subject user's sending a private messageto another user may be actions that are excluded from timeline units dueto privacy concerns. Furthermore, the timeline unit generator 120 mayconsider the privacy settings with respect to individual viewing usersto determine whether certain narrative data of a subject user can bepresented in timeline units visible to those viewing users. A subjectuser may set her privacy settings to limit the set of people to whomcertain timeline units may be shown. For example, a subject user mayallow only her immediate connections to view timeline units whichcontain photos of her, whereas another subject user may allow anyone toview timeline units which contain her photos. A subject user may alsoindividually block viewing users from viewing specific timeline units ona unit by unit basis and user by user basis, or may block user-definedgroups of viewing users. For example, a subject user may define a set ofusers to be “co-workers” and block those users, as a group, from viewingtimeline units that contain photos of her. Conversely, users or groupsof users that were previously blocked from viewing timeline units can begiven permission to view the content in a similar user-by-user andunit-by-unit basis, or by groups.

In an embodiment, the timeline unit generator 120 stores the timelineunits 180 generated in the timeline unit store 365. The timeline unitsin the timeline unit store 365 may be represented as database entriesthat link various objects related to the timeline units 180. Eachtimeline unit 180 stored in the timeline unit store 365 can beassociated with other entities in the social networking system 100. Forexample, a timeline unit 180 may be associated with one or more usersthat performed an action described in the timeline unit 180. The usersthat performed the actions described in the timeline unit are called theactors. For example, if the timeline unit describes a comment posted byJohn on a video posted by Jack, both John and Jack can be consideredactors of the timeline unit. As another example, a timeline unit 180describing a comment posted by a user in response to another user's wallpost may be associated with both the user who posted the message on thewall and the user who posted the comment.

In an embodiment the timeline unit generator 120 generates timelineunits 180 that can be visualized directly without additional processing.In another embodiment, the timeline unit generator 120 generatestimeline units 180 that must be combined with visual templates providedby the user interface manager 115 to create displayable representationsof the timeline units that can then be sent to the client 105 fordisplay on the time line interface displayed on the user interface 130.In yet another embodiment, the visual templates provided by the userinterface manager 115 and the timeline units 180 are both sent to theclient 105, where the client combines them to create a displayablerepresentation of the timeline unit for display on the time lineinterface displayed on the user interface 130.

Although the timeline unit generator 120 may generate timeline unitsbefore any request is received from the timeline manager 119, it is alsopossible in another embodiment for the timeline unit generator togenerate timeline units in response to requests from the timelinemanager 119, for example, just in time to meet a request from a viewinguser.

The Timeline Interface

The timeline manager 119 manages the presentation of subject usertimelines to viewing users of the social networking system 100. The userinterface manager 115 presents viewing users with an option, through theuser interface 130, to browse a subject user's narrative data 380through a timeline interface 200, one embodiment of which is illustratedin various states in FIGS. 2A, 2B, 2C, 2D, and 2E. The timelineinterface 200 is just one display option of the user interface 130, andthe user interface 130 may allow users to interact with and view asubject user's narrative data 380 through other display options as well(for example, a timeline map interface as illustrated in FIG. 2H, and anaction log as illustrated in FIG. 2G). The timeline interface 200(including all its components such as the timeline, timeline units,etc.) may be displayed as part of the user profile web page 201 as inFIG. 2A, or it may be an independent screen or even an independentapplication running on the client device 105. The timeline interface 200may include a time period selector 210, a timeline 220, and the visualrepresentations of the timeline units 230 that have a timeline marker235 on the timeline 220. The timeline interface may also include a titlebox 240, one embodiment of which is illustrated in more detail in FIG.2F.

The timeline manager 119 determines the time periods to display to theviewing user based on the viewing user's request, and generates timelineunits 180 for the displayed time periods, or selects pre-generatedtimeline units 180 associated with the subject user from the timelineunit store 365 for the displayed time periods. The timeline manager 119may present viewing users with a predefined time period selector 210 (asillustrated in FIG. 2A) or the timeline manager 119 may give users theability to define the bounds of a time period they wish to view, i.e.the displayed time periods will be of user determined length as opposedto a length fixed by the timeline manager 119.

Once a viewing user selects the time period for viewing, the timelinemanager 119 generates a timeline interface 200 which includes renderingsof timeline units from this time period on the timeline 220. Thetimeline 220 is a visual representation of the subject user's narrativedata over time. FIG. 2C illustrates one embodiment of the timeline 220,with displayed timeline units 230 rendered in two columns on either sideof the timeline 220. The timeline 220 includes timeline markers 235 thatshow the position of a connected timeline unit on the timeline 220. Thetimeline 220 may not fully display all the timeline units for a giventime period. The timeline units that are not displayed fully may stillhave corresponding markers on the timeline 220, but these muted markers236 may be “grayed out”, lightened, or de-emphasized in some other wayin order to distinguish them from the active or fully displayed timelinemarkers 235. When the viewing user interacts with the muted markers 236,for example by moving a mouse-cursor over them, the muted timeline unitmay be displayed in a pop-up 250 as illustrated in FIG. 2E. The timelinemanager 119 may allow the subject user (or viewing user) to permanentlymaximize a muted timeline unit by clicking a “maximize” or “show” buttonon the displayed timeline unit pop-up 250. The showing or maximizationof a muted timeline unit may be used as a signal by the timeline manager119 to display the same timeline unit (or similar timeline units) in thefuture. This signal also captures the preference of subject users and/orviewing users and may also be used by the timeline unit ranker 125 toimprove its scoring of timeline units. The ranking process is describedin more detail herein.

As illustrated in FIG. 2C, the visual representations of the timelineunits 230 may have distinct visual elements such as a header 233 thatdisplays the name and/or thumbnail photo of the social network user thatposted the narrative data that is incorporated in that displayedtimeline unit. The header 233 may also include a date when the narrativedata was uploaded or created on the social networking system 100. Atimeline unit may also include a “pin” or “star” button 231 that can beused by a user to indicate that the timeline unit is of interest tothem. Activating the star button 231 may cause the timeline unit tobecome more prominently displayed, for example, as in the embodimentillustrated in FIG. 2C, the visual representation of the timeline unit230 c is enlarged when “starred” and it is overlaid on top of thetimeline 220, and occupies both sides of the timeline (notice othertimeline units are restricted to the left side or right side of thetimeline 220). The visual representation of the timeline 230 may alsoinclude an options menu 232 that may contain additional userconfiguration options such as options to hide a timeline unit, share atimeline unit with another user of the social networking system 100, andsplit a timeline unit into smaller timeline units based on individualnarrative data, etc.

The visual representations of the timeline units 230 will also include anarrative data summary 234. The narrative data summary 234 may betextual as in 234 a in FIG. 2C, or it may be image based, as in thenarrative data summary 234 b, or it may be a video, or some other media,such as an animated GIF or FLASH content. The narrative data summary isa distillation of the narrative data used to generate the timeline unit,and it will not always contain a representation for all the narrativedata that the timeline unit was generated from. The timeline manager 119may take advantage of a ranking process to determine the most relevantnarrative data to display in the narrative data summary 234.

The displayed timeline units 230 may also include a social data summary237. The social data summary 237 gives viewers information on, forexample, the number of comments, “likes,” views, shares, and other userinteractions that the narrative data in that timeline unit has received.The social data summary 237 may also display the top comments left byother users of the social networking system 100 on the narrative data.

The embodiment of the timeline 220 illustrated in FIG. 2C shows timelineunits 230 ordered by time, flush against each other, and with theirtimeline markers 235 and muted markers 236 spaced on the timeline 220 sothat they are distinguishable. In another embodiment the timeline units230, the markers 235 and muted markers 236 are spaced on the timeline220 in proportion to the actual time between the units. For example, ifthe time period is for the month of January, and there are threetimeline units, one on January 1^(st), one on the 2^(nd), and one on the30^(th), then the first two timeline units will be flush against eachother while the third timeline unit will be separated by a significantgap corresponding to the space for the 27 days between the last twotimeline units. In a different embodiment, the timeline units 230, themarkers 235, and the muted markers 236 are spaced on the timeline 220 inproportion to the actual time between the units, but the time scale ofthe timeline 220 is varied so that the scale is larger for time periodsthat have a greater density of timeline units, and the scale is smallerfor time periods that have a lower density of timeline units. Forexample, in the above example where there are three timeline units onJanuary 1^(st), 2^(nd), and 30^(th), the space between the timeline uniton the 1^(st) and the 2^(nd) will be proportional to time, but the spacebetween the timeline unit on the 2^(nd) and the 30^(th) may becompressed if there are no other timeline units between them.

The time period selector 210, one embodiment of which is illustrated inFIG. 2E, includes a chronologically ordered list of selectable timeperiods. In this embodiment the time period selector 210 displaysselectable sections for the most recent three months (in FIG. 2E Now,Last Month, and July 2011), and then sections by year thereafter. If theuser has many years of information the years themselves may be collectedinto decades, and only the most recent three years may be displayed inthe time period selector 210. When a user selects a time period from thetime period selector 210, the timeline 220 scrolls (or refreshes) toshow the selected time period. When a user selects a time period fromthe time period selector 210, the timeline interface 200 may display afloating timeline header 252 at the top of the timeline 220. Thetimeline header 252 may display the name of the subject user as well asthe currently selected time period (e.g., in FIG. 2E it is 2009).Selecting a time period may also cause the time period selector 210 toexpand the selected time period into a selectable list of smallersub-periods 251. In the example illustrated in FIG. 2E, selecting 2009causes the expansion of the year 2009 into a list of selectable monthsfor the year 2009. The time period selector 210 may visually indicatethe selected time period by highlighting the selected time period withan appropriate visual cue, for example, with a bold font, underlining,color, size change, a sliding window, etc. The time period selector 210may also indicate the time periods that have more narrative data or morerelevant narrative data using a similar highlighting scheme. Forexample, if the month of July in 2009 has more relevant or interestingtimeline units, then that month may be highlighted with a special colorin the time period selector 210 to make it more prominent. In addition,if a time period has more or more relevant timeline units, the timeline220 itself may be highlighted in the portion corresponding to this timeperiod to indicate that this period is more significant. The timeperiods with more or more relevant timeline units may also be brokeninto finer grained granularity in the time period selector 210, toindicate to users that there is more relevant data in these periods.

The timeline header 252 may also include an add event menu 260, asillustrated in FIG. 2D. The add event menu 260 enables a subject user toadd structured data to their own timeline, in effect generating auser-created timeline unit. The add event menu may offer the user eventoptions 261 for many different event types. Selecting an event option261 causes an event data entry interface 262 to appear, where the eventdata entry interface 262 is configured to capture data for that eventtype. When the user enters information into the event data entryinterface 262 and hits the save button, the structured data is sent tothe social networking system 100, where it is used to create newnarrative data. If the structured data includes an event date, thenarrative data can be used by the timeline manager 119 to generate newtimeline units 180 that can be situated on the timeline 220 at theprovided date. For example, in FIG. 2D the user has selected the optionfor “Started a Job,” which displays an event data entry interface 262that is configured to capture data to describe the “Started a Job”event. In this example, the interface prompts the user to enteremployer, position, location, a photograph and from-to dates. Using thisinformation the timeline manager 119 may generate a “Started Work”timeline unit 263 that can be placed on that user's timeline. If theuser fails to provide some information (in this case, e.g., the user hasnot uploaded a photo), then the new timeline unit 263 can prompt for themissing data with an appropriate data inquiry interface 264 (in theexample, the interface prompts the user to “+Add a Photo”). The timelineinterface 200 may give users an interface to run queries on structureddata that has been collected from users of the social networking system100.

The timeline interface 200 may offer the user event options 261 such asstarting a job, buying a house, getting a new roommate, buying a car,graduating, starting or ending military service, having a medicalprocedure, learning a language, travelling, etc. If the user cannot findan event option that matches the event they are trying to create datafor, the social networking system 100 may allow the user to create acustom event. The add event menu 260, or another similar interface, mayalso be used by users to add content, such as comments, photos, videos,etc., to a time in the past or future on the timeline 220. When usersadd new content to the timeline 220, the timeline interface 200 mayallow users to upload new content as well as to select existing contentfrom narrative data that has already been captured by the socialnetworking system 100.

The timeline units 180 generated by the timeline unit generator 120 arenot always linked to a particular point on the timeline 220. Sometimeline units 180 act as “reports” in that they aggregate contentacross the whole time period and present the user with a summary ofactivity for that period. FIG. 2B illustrates one embodiment of thedisplayed report timeline units 270. In FIG. 2B there are four displayedreport timeline units 270 a (for Photos), 270 b (for Places), 270 c (forFriends), and 270 d (for Likes). The displayed report timeline units 270are similar to the displayed timeline units 230, but they lack thetimeline markers 235, and may be separated from the other timeline units230 by an appropriate text marker 272 on the timeline 220 (in thisexample the text marker 272 a is titled “reports”). Similar to othertimeline units 230, the report timeline units 270 may display anarrative data summary 234. The timeline manager 119 may take advantageof a ranking process to determine the most relevant narrative data todisplay in the narrative data summary 234. The narrative data summary234 can vary based on the type of the displayed report timeline unit270. For example, in FIG. 2B the Places report 270 b shows a mapindicating locations of timeline units over the time period, while thePhotos report 270 a shows thumbnails of uploaded photos over the timeperiod. The displayed report timeline units 270 may also include adynamically updated statistic 271 that displays real-time or nearlyreal-time information about the particular content of that report. Forexample, the Places report 270 b includes a dynamically updatedstatistic 271 a that indicates the number of user location check-ins inthe current time period (in this case 4). As another example, the Likesreport 270 d includes a dynamically updated statistic 271 b thatindicates the number of things that the user has “liked” in the currenttime period (in this case 6).

The text markers 272 may also be placed on the timeline 220 to indicatethe transition from one time period to the next, and clicking on thetext marker 272 may perform a function such as revealing all mutedtimeline units in the time period. For example, in FIG. 2B text marker272 b marks the end of the 2011 time period, and clicking it will revealall timeline units in the 2011 time period.

The title box 240 illustrated in FIG. 2F is an interface component thatmay include option buttons 241, dynamic thumbnails 242, user details box243, dynamic cover photo 244 and profile photo 245. The title box 240allows users to adjust their social networking system settings andpersonalize their timeline.

The option buttons 241 enable the user to adjust various preferencesassociated with a social networking system account, perform actionsassociated with the account, and view and edit detailed feeds ofinformation available to them. The options, actions and detailsavailable to a user through the option buttons 241 may vary based onwhether the user is a subject user (i.e. the account-holder for thatprofile/account) or a viewing user (i.e. someone who is not theaccount-holder). For a subject user option examples include a settingsbutton 241 a that allows users to adjust their timeline settings, anactivity log button 241 b that allows users to access a complete list ofall their activities on the social networking system 100, and an editprofile button that allows them to modify personal details such as theirprofile photo, cover photo, biography etc. For viewing users options mayinclude buttons for messaging, “friending”, “de-friending”, muting,reporting, etc. Accessing the activity log may give users access to acomplete list of all the timeline units, activities and user data thathas been collected/generated by the social networking system 100. Theactivity log may also enable users to indicate individual timelineunits, activities, or user data to hide/show/maximize on the timeline220. In this way the activity log enables users to curate their rawdata.

FIG. 2G illustrates one embodiment of an activity log that may beaccessed by a user through the activity log button 241 b. The activitylog includes time period navigation headers 273 that indicate the timeperiod for the displayed activities and enable users to jump to theactivities of a specific date. The activity log also includes activityentries 276 that give users information about a particular activitycaptured by the social networking system 100. The activity entries 276may include a time, a date, a text description of the action (e.g. “Jilladded a comment”), and a thumbnail or other data summary. The activitylog may also have date separators 277 that separate the activities ofone time period from another time period. The more activity link 278allows the user to view more activities in a particular time period ifall of those activities are not displayed on the user's screen. Theactivity filter 274 allows users to filter the activity log to displayonly activities of a particular type. For example, a user can filter theactivity log to show only photo-related activities, or activitiesrelated to a specific third-party social application. Each activityentry 276 may also have an activity options menu 275 that enables usersto perform various functions such as hiding the activity from thetimeline, allowing the activity on the timeline, featuring the activity(starring) on the timeline, etc. These functions may be performedindividually on activities or they may be performed on groups ofactivities on the basis of location, activity type, or the usersassociated with the activity. The activity options menu 275 may alsoallow the user to set privacy options for that activity to restrict whois allowed to view that activity material. In addition, the activityoptions menu 275 may enable users to change the date associated with theactivity. For example, a user may be able to change the date of a photothat the user posted from the upload date to some date associated withthe event that the photo was taken. Similarly the activity options menu275 may enable users to associate a location with an activity or tochange a location that is already associated with that activity.

The dynamic thumbnails 242, illustrated in FIG. 2F, are dynamicinterface elements that serve as links to various user information feedssuch as friends (242 a), photos (242 b), likes & interests (242 c), andnotes (242 d). Dynamic thumbnails may also be provided for third partyapplication feeds, user-defined feeds, social group feeds, etc. Theorder that is used to display the dynamic thumbnails 242 may bedetermined based on the viewing user's browsing history or preferences,or the subject user's browsing history or preferences. The order mayalso be determined by using a machine-learned ranking algorithm thatdetermines the order of the dynamic thumbnails 242 based on userpreferences, social signals, recent views, etc. The rating of athird-party application may be used as a factor that helps to determinethat third-party application's dynamic thumbnail position in the list ofdynamic thumbnails.

The dynamic thumbnails not only allow users to click on them to navigateto information, but also themselves act as small windows into the user'sdata. Each dynamic thumbnail displays a dynamic visual summary of theinformation feed that it links to. For example, the friends dynamicthumbnail 242 a displays a small collage of the user's friends' profilephotos, as well as a numerical statistic showing the number of friendsthe user has (in this case 553). Similarly the photo dynamic thumbnail242 b shows a recent photo that the user was tagged in, as well as astatistic indicating the total number of photos that the user was taggedin (in this case 547). The content in the thumbnail and the statisticscan change in real-time based on information collected by the socialnetworking system 100. The dynamic thumbnails 242 may use the servicesof a ranking process (for example, a machine-learned scoring/rankingprocess as described in more detail herein) to determine the mostrelevant and interesting data to use in the dynamic summary. Each typeof dynamic thumbnail 242 may use a different ranking methodology todetermine the content (e.g. images) to display. For example, the photosdynamic thumbnail 242 a may display a collage consisting of the user's“best” photos based on a machine-learned algorithms ranking of theuser's photos based on factors such as photo views, comments, likes etc.The ranking methodology can take into account the newness of recentlyadded photos to place them higher in the photo ranking, and thus morelikely to be displayed in the dynamic thumbnail 242. As the user postsmore photographs to the social networking system 100, the photos dynamicthumbnail 242 a may update the collage of photos displayed to includethe newest photos posted.

The timeline manager 119 may enable a user to display alternative“views” of the timeline by clicking a dynamic thumbnail 242, or byclicking another option or link. These views can be used to presentusers with a timeline 220 containing timeline units of a particulartype. For example, a “Photo” view of the timeline 220 would present atimeline containing only timeline units that have photos. Other viewscan present a user with an entirely customized view of the timeline 220that is appropriate for a particular data type.

FIG. 2H illustrates a “map view” of the timeline. In this “map view” thetimeline 220 is replaced by a timeline map 280. The timeline map 280includes a displayed map location and map markers 281 that indicate thelocations associated with timeline units in the current displayed timeperiod. When the user interacts with a map marker 281 (for example byclicking it) a timeline unit pop-up 282 may be shown which showsinformation about that timeline unit. In this example the pop-up 282shows a picture from the timeline unit and social data about the numberof comments and “likes” on that timeline unit. The pop-up 282 may allowa user to comment on or “like” the timeline unit at that location. If alocation has more than one timeline unit associated with it, or if thetimeline map 280 is zoomed out so that timeline units with distinctlocations overlap, then multiple timeline units will be shown via asingle map marker called a timeline map group marker 283. The timelinemap group marker 283 has a numerical indicator on it showing the numberof timeline units at that location (e.g. in this case 61). If a userzooms in the timeline map 280 such that the locations of the timelineunits no longer overlap, then the timeline map group marker 283 willresolve itself into individual map markers 281 that indicate thelocations of the individual timeline units on the zoomed in map.Similarly if the timeline map 280 is zoomed out such that the locationsof the map markers 281 begin to overlap again, the map markers will bereplaced by a single timeline map group marker 283 with a numericalindicator reflecting the number of timeline units at that location. Ifthe timeline map 280 is zoomed out even further, multiple timeline mapgroup markers 283 may be combined into a single timeline map groupmarker 283. The scale of the timeline map group marker 283 may beincreased to reflect the number of timeline units represented by it. Forexample, in the example illustrated in FIG. 2H the group markerassociated with 63 timeline units is much larger than the one associatedwith 3 timeline units. When a user clicks the timeline map group marker283 a group pop-up may be displayed that is similar to the pop-up 282.The group pop-up may display the group of timeline units at the locationof the timeline map group marker 283, or the group pop-up may displayonly a single timeline unit from that location along with left and rightarrows that allow the user to scroll between all the timeline units atthe location.

The timeline filter tabs 284 enable users to filter the timeline unitsshown on the timeline map 280 based on various filtering criteria, suchas in the illustrated example, by timeline unit type. The timeline unitsmay also be filtered by other criteria such as by the users associatedwith the timeline units, time, location, etc. In the illustratedexample, each timeline filter tab 284 displays statistics about thenumbers of the corresponding type of timeline unit visible in thecurrent time period. For example, in this illustration, the “Places” tab284 a shows that there are 253 “places” timeline units in the currentlyselected time period. Filters based on other criteria may display otherstatistics.

As in other timeline views, in the timeline map 280 a user can changethe currently viewed time period using the time period selector 210.This can be considered a form of timeline unit filtering, where thefiltering of the timeline units is done by time, instead of by someother criteria. When a different time period is selected by the user,the timeline map 280 will show map markers for timeline units from thenewly selected time period. The timeline map 280 may also scroll to anew location, or center on a new location based on the locations of thetimeline units in the currently selected time period. The timeline map280 may also have controls that allow a user to manually zoom, pan, androtate the map view.

In one embodiment the timeline map 280 presents a map view of a jointtimeline for multiple subject users (a joint timeline map). Thegeneration of timeline units for a joint timeline is discussed in moredetail herein. The timeline map 280 may treat timeline units that aregenerated for multiple subject users in a manner that is analogous tothe way it treats timeline units generated for one subject user. In thecase of multiple subject users, the timeline filter tabs 284 may have atab for each subject user to enable filtering of the timeline view byeach subject user. The statistics displayed on each timeline filter tab284, in this example, may be based on the number of timeline unitsrelated to that subject user.

In one embodiment the timeline map 280 enables users to create a newtimeline unit associated with a location by selecting the correspondinglocation on the timeline map 280 and entering data for an event linkedwith that location. For example, the timeline map 280 may open an eventdata entry interface 262 (as illustrated in FIG. 2D) when a user clicksa location on the timeline map 280. Entering data into the event dataentry interface 262 sends new structured data to the social networkingsystem 100 that can be used to create a timeline unit associated withthat location.

In one embodiment the timeline map 280 may show generic stories insteadof timeline units. Generic stories are discussed in more detail herein.When a timeline map 280 displays generic stories instead of timelineunits, it may be called a “map view”, “story map” or just a map. A storymap behaves in a manner analogous to a timeline map 280, except thatinstead of timeline units, the map markers show the locations of genericstories, the filtering tabs operate to filter the stories instead oftimeline units, and the story map enables users to create new storiesassociated with locations instead of new timeline units associated withlocations.

The user details box 243, illustrated in FIG. 2F, contains a summary ofthe most relevant information about the user such as relationshipstatus, employer, location, etc. This information may be provided by theuser explicitly, or it may be deduced from unstructured informationcollected by the social networking system 100.

The dynamic cover photo 244, illustrated in FIG. 2F, is another dynamicinterface element. The dynamic cover photo 244 includes an image that isselected by the subject user to personalize their timeline. The dynamiccover photo 244 may have several different render states. Each renderstate may be visually different. In the simplest embodiment the dynamiccover photo 244 has a maximized state where the entire photo is visible,and a minimized state where the photo is only partially visible (e.g.the picture may scroll up to occupy less of the screen). The differentrender states may be activated based on who the viewing user is, whatthat viewing user's social network browsing history is, the duration thestate has already been active, the rating/relevancy of the dynamic coverphoto content, the viewing user's screen size, or other factors. Forexample, the dynamic cover photo 244 may be displayed in its maximizedrender state (or, full size) when a viewing user views the dynamic coverphoto 244 for the first time, and then on subsequent views of the coverphoto the photo may be displayed in its minimized render state (e.g.,scrolled up). The image displayed in the dynamic cover photo 244 mayhave the capability to shrink or expand to fill the space available inthe interface for the dynamic cover photo 244. As the display propertieschange, the image may change its scaling to fill the available area. Forexample, the image will be able to fill the dynamic cover photo 244 areaif the title box 240 is displayed in either landscape or portrait modeon a mobile device.

The profile photo 245 is selected by the subject user and may be usedwhenever an image representation of the user is necessary in the socialnetworking system 100. For example, the profile photo 245 of the subjectuser is displayed on the timeline interface 200 via the title box 240,but it may also be displayed on timeline units 230 that containnarrative data posted by the subject user.

In one embodiment, when a user selects a time period in the past toview, the profile photo 245, users details box 243, and/or dynamic coverphoto 244 may change the data they display to reflect the subject user'shistorical data (e.g. their profile photo at that time in the past,their relationship status at that time in the past, etc.).

The timeline interface 200 is sent via the network 310 to the clientdevice 105 of the viewing user, and is displayed via the user interface130. If the viewing user selects a new time period from the time periodselector 210, the timeline manager will generate or select new timelineunits from the newly selected time period. The new timeline units arethen sent to the viewing user's client device 105 for presentation inthe timeline interface 200 at an appropriate position on the timeline220.

In one embodiment, the timeline 220 is a single chronologically orderedcontinuum which contains every selectable time period in order. In thisembodiment, selecting a time period from the time period selector 210causes the timeline 220 to scroll to the selected time period in thecontinuum. In another embodiment the timeline 220 shows only one timeperiod at a time, and selecting a new time period from the time periodselector 210 causes a new time period to be shown on the timeline 220.

In one embodiment of the invention, the timeline manager 119 choosestimeline units for presentation in the timeline 220 based on a timelineunit ranking produced by the timeline unit ranker 125 for the subjectuser. In another variation, the timeline units selected by the timelinemanager 119, which may have been selected using a ranking produced bythe timeline unit ranker 125, are curated by the subject user to reflecthis or her preference regarding what timeline units to present toviewing users. Once the timeline manager has determined what timelineunits to show in the subject user's currently selected time period, theuser interface manager 115 presents the timeline 220 in the timelineinterface 200 to the viewing users through the user interface 130. In analternative embodiment the timeline unit ranking is produced by thetimeline unit ranker 125 for the viewing user instead of the subjectuser. In this embodiment, the viewing user may be allowed to curate thesubject user's timeline 220 to reflect his or her preferences regardingwhat timeline units to view. For example, if Bob is viewing the timelinefor Jim, the social networking system 100 may give Bob the ability tohide and show timeline units on Jim's timeline, and then this curationdata may be used subsequently so that Bob can be presented with atimeline consisting of Jim's timeline units selected with Bob'spreference in mind.

Once the timeline manager 119 has selected timeline units 230 forpresentation in the timeline 220 it may highlight the timeline units 230based on their ranking. For example, the timeline manager 119 mayemphasize timeline units that are highly ranked by the timeline unitranker 125, by presenting these highly ranked timeline units moreprominently compared to timeline units ranked lower. Timeline unitsranked higher may be presented more prominently compared to timelineunits ranked lower by displaying them, for example, using a larger size,outline, different text color, font, text size, background color, etc.One example of this is the “starred” displayed timeline unit 230 cillustrated in FIG. 2C, which is displayed with double the width ofother displayed timeline units 230.

For a given time period, the timeline manager 119 may display only asubset of the timeline units available for that time period in order tolimit the crowding of the timeline 220; when only a subset of timelineunits are displayed, the timeline manager 119 will attempt to select themost appropriate timeline units for display based on user curationand/or ranking, or some other methodology.

User Curation

The social networking system 100 may allow users to curate their ownnarrative data (this includes the user data objects 175 in the user datastore 350, and the actions 181 in the action log 351). As curators,users are given the power to highlight narrative data they like and toremove or hide narrative data they dislike. In order to enableuser-driven curation, the user interface manager 115 may give users theoption of hiding or removing timeline units, by hiding or removing thevisual representations of those timeline units through the userinterface 130. The timeline interface 200 may have a method ofindividually removing the unwanted timeline units, such as the “hidefrom timeline” option in the timeline unit menu 232 b illustrated inFIG. 2B, but the user interface 130 may also use another interface toallow users to indicate unwanted timeline units either individually orcollectively by action category, by data type, by actor, or by someother attribute associated with timeline units. The timeline interface200 may also give users the ability to indicate that a timeline unit isimportant to them, and that they want it to be preferred over othertimeline units. The timeline interface 200 may have a method ofindividually marking the visual representations of timeline units as“important” or “liked,” such as the “star” button 231 b or a “pin”button, or the user interface 130 may use another interface to allowusers to indicate preferred timeline units, either individually orcollectively.

The social networking system 100 may, as a matter of policy, allow onlythe subject user to curate the timeline units displayed on his or hertimeline 220, or the social networking system 100 may allow viewingusers to curate their view of a subject user's timeline 220. Thetimeline manager 119 may also allow both the subject user and viewingusers to curate the subject user's timeline 220. In a differentembodiment the timeline manager 119 may ignore user curation altogetherand select timeline units on the basis of some other criteria (includingor excluding the ranking information from the timeline unit ranker 125).

Timeline Unit Generation and Ranking

FIG. 4 illustrates one embodiment of a process for generating andranking timeline units in a social networking system 100. In thisembodiment, narrative data such as user data from the user data store350 and information about user actions from the action log 351 are usedby the timeline unit generator 120 to generate timeline units 180 fordisplay in the timeline 220. Each timeline unit generated by thetimeline unit generator 120 includes information about the narrativedata that timeline unit represents, and may also include a scoregenerated by the timeline unit scorer 420. In one embodiment, thetimeline unit generator 120 only generates the quantity of timelineunits necessary to fill each time period on the timeline 220. In anothervariation, the timeline unit generator 120 may generate more timelineunits 230 than are necessary to fill each time period on the timeline220, so that if a downstream process—such as a privacy process—hides oneor more timeline units from the timeline 220, there will be extratimeline units that can be displayed to fill the vacancies.

In one embodiment the timeline unit generator 120, when generatingtimeline units for a particular time period, may select the mostinteresting or relevant narrative data, from the point of view of thesubject user, for that time period, and generates timeline units foronly that narrative data. In another embodiment the relevance of thenarrative data is determined from the point of view of the viewing userinstead of the subject user, or both the viewing user and subject usertogether.

The timeline unit generator may determine how interesting or relevantnarrative data is based on social networking data such as user “likes”,number of comments on the item, views of the item, affinity, etc. Thedetermination of the most interesting and relevant narrative data mayalso take into account the time period for which the timeline unit isbeing generated. For example, a photo associated with a time in a timeperiod in which the user does not have many other photos may beconsidered more interesting and relevant than a similar photo from atime period that has many photos associated with it. The determinationof the most interesting and relevant narrative data may also take intoaccount the preferences of the subject user and/or the viewing user.

In an embodiment, the timeline unit generator 120 uses machine-learnedmodels—generated by the machine-learning module 345—to determine themost interesting and relevant narrative data based. In anotherembodiment, the timeline unit generator 120 uses a rule-based system todetermine the most interesting and relevant narrative data, where therules are programmed manually. In yet another embodiment, the timelineunit generator 120 determines the narrative data to use in timeline unitgeneration by collecting feedback (such as through user curation) fromthe subject user, the viewing users, or both. The timeline unitgenerator may also use any combination of the above mentioned techniquestogether to select narrative data for the generation of timeline units.In another embodiment, the timeline unit generator 120 may generatetimeline units for a particular time period using all the narrativedata, without taking into account relevance at all.

In one embodiment the timeline unit generator 120 generates timelineunits associated with a single subject user by selecting only narrativedata that is related to that single subject user, e.g. photos containingthe subject user, posts about the subject user, events attended by thesubject user, etc. These timeline units can be used to generate atimeline for the single subject user.

In another embodiment the timeline unit generator 120 generates timelineunits associated with two or more subject users in a “common timelinegroup” by selecting narrative data that is related to all the subjectusers in the common timeline group, e.g. photos containing all thesubject users, comment threads containing comments by all the subjectusers, events attended by all the subject users, etc. These timelineunits can be used to generate a common timeline for all the subjectusers in the common timeline group. In another embodiment a commontimeline can be constructed for multiple subject users by simplyselecting timeline units that were generated for the individual subjectusers and displaying them on a single timeline. The generated commontimeline can be provided to viewing users that request a common timelineinterface for the common timeline group. The common timeline gives aunified view of the social networking system history of the subjectusers in the common timeline group. For example, Jill can select anoption to view a joint common timeline for several of her classmates,Bob, Jim, and John, at once. The social networking system 100 will thenselect timeline units that are generated from the common narrative dataof Bob, Jim, and John, and will send these timeline units for display onJill's client device. Systems and methods for displaying an intersectionbetween users of a social networking system are disclosed in U.S.application Ser. No. 13/087,672, filed on Apr. 15, 2011, which isincorporated by reference in its entirety.

The timeline units generated by the timeline unit generator 120 may havedifferent types based on the type of content they contain and/or theinformational purpose they serve. For instance, some timeline units maybe designed to display information concerning a particular event. Forexample, there may be distinct timeline unit types designed to displayinformation about job changes, trips, weddings, birthdays, film viewingsetc. Some timeline units may be designed for the purpose of displayingaggregate groups of data of various types. For example, there may betimeline unit types for aggregating photos, videos, or music from aparticular time period or event (e.g. a photo report for a time period).Other timeline units may be used to display information related toactions performed by users of the social networking system. For example,there may be timeline units designed to display information about theconnections made by a user in a particular time period—e.g. a timelineunit may display the friends that a user made in a particular timeperiod (i.e. a friends report).

The different timeline unit types will arrange the data they contain ina manner that is informative to the viewing user and aestheticallypleasing. Since the timeline units are intended to give a summary of thenarrative data they represent, they will not necessarily display all ofthe narrative data they are generated to represent. The visualrepresentations of the timeline units may display information summaryelements in order to present users with a compact and informativesummary of narrative data. Information summary elements include imagethumbnails (which act as image summaries), text extracts (which act astextual comment summaries), frame captures and GIF animations (which actas video summaries), statistical summaries (numbers that provideinformation on the narrative data), etc. These information summaryelements may be generated from the most relevant or interestingnarrative data in order to present users with the most compellingsummaries. For example, a timeline unit may be generated for a photoalbum, and the information summary elements displayed on it may includethumbnails of the three most popular photos in photo album, as well as adisplayed number that indicates the number of photos in the album.

The information summary elements may be updated dynamically as theunderlying narrative data changes. The visual representations of thetimeline units may also include navigation aids that provide users witha convenient method of obtaining more information about specificnarrative data that interests them. These navigation aids includeelements like web links, tabs, and buttons. An element in a displayedtimeline unit may be both an information summary element and anavigation aid. For example, the visual representation of a timelineunit may contain a set of photo thumbnails representing images from asubject user's photo album, where each thumbnail is also a link that canbe clicked to navigate to the photo album itself and to view otherphotos in the album.

The timeline unit scorer 420 produces a score for each generatedtimeline unit that corresponds to the relevance of that timeline unit tothe subject user(s) and/or viewing users. The timeline unit scorer 420may use machine-learned models to produce the score for each generatedtimeline unit. These machine-learned models are produced by themachine-learning module 345. In one embodiment, the machine-learnedmodels use machine-learning techniques to evaluate timeline unitsagainst other timeline units of similar type. For example, timelineunits containing photos are compared against other timeline unitscontaining photos, not against timeline units containing links and text.In order to evaluate the relevance of timeline units, themachine-learned models may use as input various features of thenarrative data represented in the timeline units. These features mayinclude social data signals such as user “likes” (e.g. activation of athumbs-up or like button), user comments, user tags, user views, useraffinity etc., but they may also include other signals such as imagefeatures, video features, textual features, etc.

The generated timeline units with scores 402 outputted by the timelineunit generator 120 are processed by the timeline unit ranker 125 toproduce a ranking of timeline units. In order to place timeline units ofdifferent types into one uniform ranking, the timeline unit ranker 125normalizes scores across different timeline unit types. Thenormalization process can be used to weight certain timeline unit typesto increase or decrease their rank. For example, the social networkingsystem 100 may, because viewers often prefer photos over text, giveadditional weight to timeline units that contain photos while reducingthe weight of timeline units that predominantly contain text. Theweightings and the details of the normalization process can be adjustedbased on the needs of the social networking system 100. For example, thenormalization process can be configured for a particular user or aspecific demographic to account for tastes and preferences. In oneembodiment, the timeline unit ranker 125 uses machine-learned models todetermine the appropriate weighting for each timeline unit type. Thesemachine-learned models are produced by the machine-learning module 345.In order to determine a weighting for each timeline unit type, themachine-learned models may look at various features and social datasignals associated with these timeline unit types. These feature andsignals include user “likes”, user comments, user views, user affinityetc., and may also include features from the underlying narrative dataincluded in these timeline unit types.

Once the timeline units are normalized, the timeline ranker 125 willcreate a ranking based on the normalized scores. The ranked timelineunits 403 may be stored in the timeline unit store 365, or they may beselected directly by the timeline manager 119 for display in thetimeline 220 in the timeline interface 200.

In one embodiment, after ranking the timeline units, the timeline unitranker 125 may attempt to remove duplicate narrative data that appearsin multiple timeline units (de-duplication). In a simple embodiment,when the timeline unit ranker 125 detects two timeline units containingthe same action or user data, the timeline unit ranker 125 willeliminate the timeline unit with the lower score. This avoids thesituation where, for example, the same photo or comment shows up in twoor more timeline units. In a more sophisticated embodiment, when thetimeline unit ranker 125 detects two timeline units containing the samenarrative data, the timeline unit ranker 125 will attempt to remove onlythe narrative data that is duplicated, from the timeline unit with thelower score. This process may require the timeline unit ranker 125 to dofurther analysis to determine if the removal of the duplicated narrativedata renders a timeline unit “uninteresting” or invalid. For example, ifa timeline unit contains only a single photo and a comment referring tothat photo, then the removal of the comment may not make the timelineunit uninteresting, since viewers may enjoy looking at single photoseven without comments. However, in this example if the duplicatedmaterial is the photo, then the removal of the photo may render thetimeline unit uninteresting, since a comment referring to the photo isnot interesting without the photo itself.

In one embodiment, when the timeline manager 119 is selecting timelineunits for display in the timeline interface, timeline unit ranker 125may implement a diversification process to ensure that there is adiversity of different timeline unit types in the timeline 220. Such adiversification process is used to ensure that a single timeline 220 isnot filled with an excess of a single timeline unit type, which is amonotonous outcome. For example, without a diversification process, itis possible that the top ten timeline units for a time period are allpredominantly photo timeline units. This would lead to a timeline 220which would have mostly photos and little else (a monotonous selection).To prevent such an outcome the timeline unit ranker 125 will use avariety of methods to ensure diversity in the timeline units selected bythe timeline manager 119. One such method is to allow only a certainnumber of each timeline unit type to be selected for display in a timeperiod. Another method is to negatively weight timeline units of a giventype once a certain number of other timeline units of the same type havealready been selected for display in a time period. In one embodiment,the diversification process may be done earlier, when the timeline unitsare ranked and stored in the timeline unit store 365. Diversificationmay be varied based on the demographic of the viewing user, the subjectuser, or both.

In one embodiment, the timeline manager 119 may allow users to selectparticular “views” of the timeline 220 that are biased to show many moreof one type of timeline unit, or exclusively one type of timeline unit.The timeline manager 119 may achieve this by simply weighting the scoreof timeline units of a particular type higher so that all, or more, ofthose timeline units are selected for display in the timeline 220. Forexample, if a user selects a “Photos” view of the timeline 220, thetimeline manager 119 may score timeline units that contain photos muchmore than other types of timeline units, so that the timeline units withphotos are displayed on the timeline 220.

Machine-Learning Module

The machine-learning module 345 generates machine-learned models 404 foruse by the timeline unit scorer 420 and the timeline unit generator 120,the timeline unit ranker 125, and for ranking content for relevance asrequired by various components of the timeline interface. For example,the machine-learned models can be used by the timeline manager 119 todetermine the most relevant photos to display in a Photo report for aparticular time period. The machine-learned models generated by themachine-learning module 345 include tree-based models, kernel methods,neural networks, splines, and combinations of one or more of thesetechniques. The machine-learning module 345 may also use othermachine-learned methods or statistical methods to generate models.

In one embodiment, the machine-learning module 345 takes user curationdata 400 collected from the timeline interface 200 and uses thisinformation to improve machine-learned models 404 that are used by theother modules. The user curation data may include not only the explicitpreference data such as data about which timeline units have beenhidden, muted, deleted, starred, liked or promoted by the subject user,but may also include implicitly collected social data such asinformation about which timeline units have been viewed, expanded,linked, commented on, etc. This user curation data, both implicit andexplicit, may be used by the machine-learning module 345 as trainingdata to improve machine-learned models that may then be used by theother modules. For example, a trained machine-learned model from themachine-learning module 345 may be used by the timeline unit ranker 125to determine the weighting that should be given to timeline units ofvarious types during the score normalization process. Another trainedmachine-learned model may be used by the timeline unit scorer 420 togenerate timeline unit scores. Yet another trained machine-learned modelmay be used by the timeline unit generator 120 to determine the mostinteresting or relevant narrative data for generation of timeline units.

The machine-learning module 345 may generate a single set ofmachine-learned models, which captures the preferences of the entireuser base of the social networking system 100, or the machine-learningmodule 345 may be used to generate separate sets of machine-learnedmodels for subsets of the user base of the social networking system 100(e.g. a different set of models for people in different age ranges). Themachine-learning module 345 may also be used to generate a distinct setof machine-learned models to capture the preferences of each individualuser of the social networking system 100.

Timeline Unit Generation Process

FIG. 5A and FIG. 5B illustrate one embodiment of a process forgenerating, ranking, and displaying timeline units in a socialnetworking system 100. As a first step the social networking systembegins 500 a process for generating timeline units for the subjectuser(s). This process may be initiated periodically to continuouslygenerate new and updated timeline units for users of the socialnetworking system, or it may be initiated in response to an event, suchas an attempt by a viewing user to access the timeline of a subjectuser. Once the process is begun, the timeline unit generator willdetermine 501 the narrative data related to the subject user(s). Therelevant narrative data may already be associated with the subjectuser(s) in a database, or it may be discovered by processing actions anduser data in the action log and user data store to discover associationsand links between the subject user(s) and various data. For example, aphoto may be determined to be narrative data relevant to a subject userbased upon a caption that contains the subject user's name that isassociated with that photo. Similarly, actions where the subject user(s)is/are one of the actors may also be determined to be relevant narrativedata.

Once the narrative data is identified, the timeline unit generator willdetermine 502 the most interesting and relevant items from thisnarrative data to use in timeline unit generation for each time period.The determination of the most relevant and interesting narrative datamay be accomplished using a machine-learned model, as described inprevious sections, or it may employ some other method. In someembodiments, user curation of data, from later stages in the process,can be fed back into the machine-learned models to improve the processof determining 502 the most relevant/interesting narrative data.

In one embodiment the timeline manager 119 takes into account theprivacy settings of the subject user and the viewing user to determinethe items of narrative data that the viewing user has permission toview. If the viewing user does not have permission to view certain itemsof narrative data, those items of narrative data will not be used in thegeneration of timeline units. In a different embodiment there is noprivacy check at this stage of the process, and instead the privacyprocess operates on generated timeline units, prior to selection, asdescribed herein.

Once the narrative data is identified and selected, timeline units aregenerated 503 and scored 504. The scoring 504 of timeline units may alsoemploy machine-learned models. These models can be the same as themachine-learned models used to evaluate the narrative data or they maybe separate models. Once the timeline units are scored, the scores arenormalized 505 by timeline unit type as described in previous sections.This normalization process may be used to weight certain timeline unittypes so that they are preferentially treated by downstream processesfor the purposes of ranking and selection. The weights used for eachtimeline unit type in the normalization process may be produced by amachine-learned model.

The normalized timeline units are then ranked by score 506 andde-duplicated 507 to remove repetitious data. The de-duplication processmay involve simply removing the lower ranked timeline units that haverepetitious data, or it may involve selectively removing only therepetitious narrative data from lower ranked timeline units.

Once the timeline units have been ranked 506 and de-duplicated 507,there may be a diversification process 508 to ensure that there issufficient variety of timeline units in the timeline unit ranking foreach time period. Diversification of timeline units may be accomplishedin many different ways. The timeline units may be diversified 508 afterranking 506 and de-duplication 507 as illustrated in FIG. 5A, bypenalizing the score of timeline unit types that are overrepresented inthe timeline unit rankings for a time period, and boosting the score oftimeline unit types that are underrepresented. In the embodimentillustrated in FIG. 5A, after diversification 508 the timeline units arestored 509 so that they may be retrieved and displayed at a later time.In another embodiment the timeline units are selected for displayimmediately after diversification, bypassing the storage step.

In a different embodiment, the diversification 508 may also beaccomplished later in the process when the timeline units are retrievedfor display in a particular time period. In this latter process thetimeline units are diversified as they are selected from the timelineunit store 365 by monitoring what timeline unit types have already beenselected from the store, and preferentially selecting other types oftimeline units as necessary. This latter process for diversifyingtimeline units is especially useful when the time period duration isuser-defined as opposed to fixed by the timeline manager 119.

FIG. 5B illustrates one embodiment of a process for retrieving anddisplaying timeline units in a social networking system 100. The processis initiated when a viewing user requests a timeline interface for thesubject user(s). The timeline manager determines 510 the time period todisplay. The timeline interface may use a variety of graphical userinterfaces to allow viewing users to indicate the time period of thesubject user(s) data they wish to view. In a simple embodiment theviewing user is given a list of predetermined time periods to choosefrom. In a more flexible embodiment the viewing user is given theability to choose the start and end of the time period they wish toview. If the viewing user has not selected a time period to display, thetimeline manager may display a timeline interface using a default timeperiod, for example, the latest time period.

Once the bounds of the time period are determined, the timeline managerwill determine 511 the number of timeline units to retrieve. Thetimeline manager may make this determination based on the spaceavailable in the timeline 220. Once the number of timeline units neededto fill the time period is known, the timeline manager will retrieve 512timeline units for display. However, before the timeline units can bedisplayed, the timeline manager will determine 513 if there are anytimeline units which contain narrative data that the current viewinguser is not authorized to view. Viewing user authorization to viewnarrative data will be based on the subject user(s) privacy settings andthe relationship between the viewing user and the subject user(s). Ifthe subject user(s) has/have restricted some narrative data as “friendsonly” and if the viewing user is not a connection of the subjectuser(s), then the viewing user will not have authorization to viewtimeline units which contain representations of that narrative data. Ifthe timeline manager determines that the viewing user does not haveauthorization to view one or more timeline units, those timeline unitswill be discarded 514 and replacement timeline units will be retrievedfrom the timeline unit store. If the viewing user has only limitedviewing authorization it is possible that there will not be enoughtimeline units to display in the currently displayed time perioddisplay. In this situation the timeline manager may leave a portion ofthe time period display empty, or the timeline manager may requestadditional timeline units from the timeline unit generator.

Once the timeline units have been selected they may be sent directly, orthey may be converted into a displayable representation, as describedabove, before being sent to the client device 105 of the viewing useralong with other elements of the timeline interface to be displayed515—in one embodiment the timeline interface is sent as part of thesubject user(s) profile page. After this step the timeline manager mayreceive 516 user curation data collected from the viewing user's clientdevice 105, for the displayed timeline units and/or the narrative datacontained in them. The user curation data can consist of many types ofuser feedback including click-through on the narrative data, moving ofthe timeline units, hiding of the timeline units, marking of timelineunits through “stars”, “pins”, “buttons”, etc., and other user feedbackmechanisms commonly used in user interfaces. In some embodiments usercuration data is only collected from the subject user(s). In otherembodiments curation data is also collected from viewing users.

Stories and Newsfeeds

Timeline units are a specific incarnation of a more general socialnetwork story aggregation. A social network story (or just “story”) isan aggregation of data gathered by the social networking system 100 thatis configured for display in various social networking system views. Forexample, stories can be presented to viewing users in a continuouslyupdated real-time newsfeed in a web browser, or stories can be displayedin a timeline view (i.e. timeline units in the timeline interface), orstories can be displayed through a map view, etc.

The story generation process is a more generalized form of the timelineunit generation process. There are different types of story generatorsconfigured to generate stories for different purposes (i.e. differentviews). Story generators select narrative data and generate stories,using story templates to configure the look and behavior of thegenerated stories. Story generators are configured to generate storiesfor a particular view, and they may restrict the selection of narrativedata that they use to generate stories based on this target view. Forexample, a story generator may be configured to generate stories for amap view of “check-ins”, and based on this purpose the story generatormay restrict the narrative data it uses to generate stories to the type“location check-ins”. In another example, a story generator may beconfigured to generate stories for a photo album view, and based on thispurpose it may restrict the narrative data that it uses to generatestories to narrative data that contains or references images. Thetimeline unit generator can be thought of as one or more special casestory generators that are configured to generate stories that aresuitable for a timeline view (i.e. for display on a timeline interface).

Another example of an application of the story generation process is thegeneration of stories for newsfeed views and historical newsfeed views.In one embodiment, a newsfeed is simply a scrollable list of the mostrelevant recent stories related to the viewing user that updates inreal-time. A historical newsfeed is a newsfeed that is reconstructed forsome time period in the past, using stories from that time period asopposed to the current time period. For newsfeeds and historicalnewsfeeds there may be multiple story generators of different typesproducing stories of different types that are displayed together in thescrollable list. Systems and methods for generating stories for anewsfeed from data captured by a social networking system are disclosedin U.S. application Ser. No. 11/503,037, filed on Aug. 11, 2006, andU.S. application Ser. No. 11/502,757, filed on Aug. 11, 2006, which areincorporated by reference in their entirety.

FIG. 6 illustrates one embodiment of the story generation, selection,and display process for newsfeeds and historical newsfeeds. One or morestory generators select and filter 600 narrative data to use for storygeneration. For newsfeeds, the selection of narrative data can be basedon the viewing user for whom the newsfeed is being generated. In oneembodiment the story generators select all narrative data that isassociated with the viewing user and with the viewing user's directconnections (friends, relatives, co-workers, etc.). In anotherembodiment the story generators may use one or more filters to selectonly certain narrative data that fulfill particular criteria. Forexample, a filter may be used to select only the most relevant narrativedata by selecting only the narrative data for which the viewing user hasthe highest affinity scores. A ranking process may also be used to helpselect the most relevant narrative data. In another example, a filtermay be used to eliminate all narrative data that the viewing user hasviewed in the past, so that only unviewed narrative data is used instory generation. Similarly, the newsfeed can select new narrative datafor story generation by using a filter that restricts the selection ofnarrative data to recently captured narrative data (e.g. narrative datacaptured in the last day, or week). A story generator may also filternarrative data based on its type. For example, an “event” storygenerator may select only narrative data that is associated with anevent, while a photo story generator may select only narrative data thatcontains images. In one embodiment the story generators filter theirselections of narrative data based on the privacy settings of thesubject users that are associated with that narrative data. In the casewhere a viewing user is not given permission by a subject user to view acertain piece of narrative data, the story generators may exclude thatnarrative data from the story generation process. In other embodimentsthere is no privacy filtering at the story generation stage and privacyis enforced later in the process as described herein.

The process for selecting and filtering narrative data for storygeneration for a historical newsfeed is similar to that for a newsfeedexcept that in the case of a historical newsfeed a story generator mayfilter based on either the viewing user's current affinity scores fornarrative data, or the viewing user's historical affinity scores fromthe time period for which the historical newsfeed is being generated. Inaddition, narrative data will be filtered to select data that isassociated with the time period for which the historical newsfeed isbeing generated.

The story generators use the selected narrative data to generate 602 apool of candidate stories using story templates. The story templatescontain information on how the narrative data should be configured fordisplay in the stories. The story templates may define a particularlayout or arrangement of data, and may also define particular userinterfaces or behaviors for the stories, based on the purpose of thestories. This is analogous to the timeline unit generation process wherenarrative data is arranged in different ways with different userinterfaces, in timeline units of different types. Similarly, there canbe stories of different types, with different user interfaces andarrangements, in newsfeeds and historical newsfeeds.

After generation, the pool of candidate stories may be stored in adatabase so that they can be quickly accessed for use in later stages inthe process. In one embodiment, a story is stored in a database as alist of references to narrative data with additional information calledthe story metadata. In this embodiment the story metadata is theinformation that defines the look and behavior of the story when it iseventually converted into a visual representation for display on aviewing user's client device.

Each generated story in the pool of candidate stories may also beassociated with a unique hash or identifier. This hash is generatedbased on the story generator type and the story metadata. The uniquehash enables the social networking system 100 to track the stories thatthe viewing user has viewed or interacted with. This information can beused to adjust the viewing user's affinity scores for the referencednarrative data, and to improve the selection of narrative data and/orstories for that viewing user. In some cases, as new narrative data iscaptured by the social networking system 100, a story may be regeneratedso that it contains some new narrative data that it did not containbefore. In these cases the story's hash will remain the same, since thehash is based only on the story generator type and the story metadata,but the narrative data that is referenced will be different. Thisenables the social networking system 100 to continue to track storieseven as the narrative data displayed in them changes over time.

After the stories are generated they may be ranked 603 to determinetheir relative relevance to the viewing user. The ranking of stories inthe candidate pool may be based on the viewing user's affinity scoresfor the stories or for the narrative data that the stories reference.The ranking may also take into account the viewing user's interactionhistory with the stories either directly, or as reflected in theaffinity scores for the referenced narrative data. The ranking may alsobe generated by way of a machine-learned model, in a manner analogous tothe timeline unit ranking described herein. Stories generated for use ina historical newsfeed may be ranked based on either the viewing user'scurrent affinity scores or they may be ranked based on the viewinguser's historical affinity scores from the time period for which thehistorical newsfeed is being generated.

After the stories are ranked, the top stories from the ranking may beselected and filtered 604 based on the ranking. In the filtering stepthe social networking system 100 may enforce various policies in thestory selection process by eliminating stories that do not meet certaincriteria. For example, a privacy policy may be enforced based on theprivacy settings of the subject users that are associated with thenarrative data referenced in the stories. In this example all storiesthat contain narrative data that a viewing user does not have permissionto view are eliminated from the pool of candidate stories. The filteringstep may also be used to enforce a diversity policy for the stories inthe newsfeed and historical newsfeed. The diversification process worksin a manner analogous to the timeline unit diversification 508, in thatthe system will attempt to avoid a monotonous selection of stories forthe newsfeed by positively biasing story types in the ranking that arepoorly represented at the top of the ranking, and negatively biasingstory types that are overrepresented at the top of the ranking.

The story selection process may also include a story de-duplication 605step. The de-duplication step is analogous to the de-duplication 507 intimeline unit generation. As in timeline unit generation the system willremove duplicate narrative data from stories by either filtering outlower ranked stories that contain the duplicate narrative data entirely,or by removing just the duplicated narrative data from lower rankedstories.

In the last step the selected stories are sent to a viewing user'sclient device for display as part of a requested newsfeed or historicalnewsfeed. In one embodiment, the raw data of the story is not sent tothe client device, but rather a visual representation of the story issent instead. The visual representation may be constructed by accessingthe referenced narrative data in the story and configuring a visualrepresentation of this narrative data using the information in the storymetadata.

The newsfeeds and historical newsfeeds may have variations that differfrom the embodiment described above. The embodiment above describesnewsfeeds and historical newsfeeds where the narrative data used isassociated with either the viewing user or any of the viewing user'sconnections, but in another embodiment the narrative data selected maybe that associated with a single subject user (who may also be theviewing user). In this embodiment the affinity scores of the subjectuser, instead of the viewing user, may be used to determine therelevance of the narrative data and/or stories. The timeline 220described herein is a variation of this latter embodiment, wheretimeline units are a specific implementation of the generic story. Inanother variation, the stories generated for a newsfeed or historicalnewsfeed may be presented as part of a “map view” where the stories areplotted on a map by location. This is analogous to the timeline map 280described herein, and the map view of the stories may have an equivalentinterface, with generic stories substituting for the timeline units.

Practical Concerns

In some embodiments, the modules of the social networking system 100 arenot contained within a single networking system but are found acrossseveral such systems. The social networking system 100 may communicatewith the other systems, for example, using APIs. In these embodiments,some modules shown in FIG. 3 may run in the social networking system100, whereas other modules may run in the other systems. For example, inone embodiment the user data store 350 and action log 351, may run onsome external networked database system outside the social networkingsystem 100.

The foregoing description of the embodiments of the invention has beenpresented for the purpose of illustration; it is not intended to beexhaustive or to limit the invention to the precise forms disclosed.Persons skilled in the relevant art can appreciate that manymodifications and variations are possible in light of the abovedisclosure. Some portions of this description describe the embodimentsof the invention in terms of algorithms and symbolic representations ofoperations on information. These algorithmic descriptions andrepresentations are commonly used by those skilled in the dataprocessing arts to convey the substance of their work effectively toothers skilled in the art. These operations, while describedfunctionally, computationally, or logically, are understood to beimplemented by computer programs or equivalent electrical circuits,microcode, or the like. Furthermore, it has also proven convenient attimes, to refer to these arrangements of operations as modules, withoutloss of generality. The described operations and their associatedmodules may be embodied in software, firmware, hardware, or anycombinations thereof.

Any of the steps, operations, or processes described herein may beperformed or implemented with one or more hardware or software modules,alone or in combination with other devices. In one embodiment, asoftware module is implemented with a computer program productcomprising a computer-readable medium containing computer program code,which can be executed by a computer processor for performing any or allof the steps, operations, or processes described. Embodiments of theinvention may also relate to an apparatus for performing the operationsherein. This apparatus may be specially constructed for the requiredpurposes, and/or it may comprise a general-purpose computing deviceselectively activated or reconfigured by a computer program stored inthe computer. Such a computer program may be stored in a non-transitory,tangible computer readable storage medium, or any type of media suitablefor storing electronic instructions, which may be coupled to a computersystem bus. Furthermore, any computing systems referred to in thespecification may include a single processor or may be architecturesemploying multiple processor designs for increased computing capability.

Embodiments of the invention may also relate to a product that isproduced by a computing process described herein. Such a product maycomprise information resulting from a computing process, where theinformation is stored on a non-transitory, tangible computer readablestorage medium and may include any embodiment of a computer programproduct or other data combination described herein.

Finally, the language used in the specification has been principallyselected for readability and instructional purposes, and it may not havebeen selected to delineate or circumscribe the inventive subject matter.It is therefore intended that the scope of the invention be limited notby this detailed description, but rather by any claims that issue on anapplication based hereon. Accordingly, the disclosure of the embodimentsof the invention is intended to be illustrative, but not limiting, ofthe scope of the invention, which is set forth in the following claims.

What is claimed is:
 1. A method comprising: accessing a social graph,wherein the social graph comprises a plurality of nodes representing aplurality of users and a plurality of other objects in a socialnetworking system, the social graph further comprising a plurality ofconnections among the nodes; receiving an event option selection from auser of the plurality of users through an event option of a timelineinterface; responsive to receiving the event option, presenting an eventdata entry interface to the user; receiving event information from theuser through the event data entry interface, the event informationdescribing an event associated with the user and identifying one or moreobjects of the plurality of objects; generating a node associated withthe event; storing the node associated with the event in the socialgraph, the node being connected within the social graph to a noderepresenting the user and to one or more nodes representing theidentified one or more objects; generating a new timeline unitassociated with the user based on the node associated with the event;and sending the new timeline unit to a client device operated by aviewing user for display to the viewing user.
 2. The method of claim 1,further comprising: selecting an event data entry interface based on aselected event type.
 3. The method of claim 1, wherein the user does notprovide all the information requested by the event data entry interface,and the displayed timeline unit includes a data inquiry interface thatprompts the user for missing data.
 4. The method of claim 1, wherein theevent data entry interface further comprises a means for requesting andcapturing an event date.
 5. The method of claim 4, wherein the generatedtimeline unit is associated with a time corresponding to the event date.6. The method of claim 4, wherein the generated timeline unit isdisplayed in the timeline interface at a location on a timeline thatcorresponds to the event date.
 7. The method of claim 1, wherein theevent data entry interface comprises an add event menu, the add eventmenu configured to enable the user to select an event type from a listof event types, the list of event types including an event typepreviously selected by the user.
 8. The method of claim 7, wherein theadd event menu further comprises event options that allow the user toselect at least one event type from a group consisting of: starting ajob, buying a house, getting a new roommate, buying a car, graduating,military service, medical procedure, learning a language, and traveling.9. The method of claim 1, wherein the event data entry interfacecomprises an event option that allows the user to provide data for acustom event.
 10. The method of claim 1, further comprising: beforesending the new timeline unit to the client device operated by theviewing user, checking the user's privacy settings to determine if theviewing user has permission to view narrative data in the new timelineunit; and sending the new timeline unit only if the viewing user haspermission to view the narrative data.
 11. The method of claim 1,further comprising: generating additional timeline units based on one ormore logged actions of the user observed by the social networkingsystem.
 12. The method of claim 11, further comprising: ranking theadditional timeline units; and selecting, by the social networkingsystem, a subset of the ranked additional timeline units, where thetimeline interface comprises the selected subset of the rankedadditional timeline units.
 13. A non-transitory, computer programproduct comprising a non-transitory computer-readable storage mediumhaving instructions encoded thereon that, when executed by a processor,cause the processor to: access a social graph, wherein the social groupcomprises a plurality of nodes representing users and a plurality ofobjects in a social networking system, the social graph furthercomprising a plurality of connections among the nodes; receive an eventoption selection form a user of the plurality of users through an eventoption of a timeline interface; responsive to receiving the eventoption, present an event data interface to the user; receive eventinformation from the user through the event data entry interface, theevent information describing an event associated with the user andidentifying one or more objects of the plurality of objects; generate anode associated with the event; store the node associated with the eventin the social graph, the node being connected within the social graph tothe node representing the user and to one or more nodes representing theidentified one or more objects; generate a new timeline unit associatedwith the user based on the node associated with the event; and send thenew timeline unit to a client device operated by a viewing user fordisplay to the viewing user.
 14. The computer program product of claim13, wherein the event data entry interface further comprises a means forrequesting and capturing an event date.
 15. The computer program productof claim 14, wherein the generated timeline unit is associated with atime corresponding to the event date.
 16. The computer program productof claim 14, wherein the generated timeline unit is displayed in thetimeline interface at a location on a timeline that corresponds to theevent date.
 17. The computer program product of claim 13, wherein theevent data entry interface comprises an add event menu, the add eventmenu configured to enable the user to select an event type from a listof event types, the list of event types including an event typepreviously selected by the user.
 18. The computer program product ofclaim 13, further comprising: before sending the new timeline unit tothe client device operated by the viewing user, checking the user'sprivacy settings to determine if the viewing user has permission to viewnarrative data in the new timeline unit; and sending the new timelineunit only if the viewing user has permission to view the narrative data.19. The computer program product of claim 13, further comprising:generating additional timeline units based on one or more logged actionsof the user observed by the social networking system.
 20. The computerprogram product of claim 19, further comprising: ranking the additionaltimeline units; and selecting, by the social networking system, a subsetof the ranked additional timeline units, where the timeline interfacecomprises the selected subset of the ranked additional timeline units.